Patients undergoing multiple drug regimens, or their caregivers, are required to manage multiple prescriptions and supplements. This includes ensuring that multiple tablets are ingested at predetermined times, in differing arrangements or dose groupings. For example, a patient taking four different medications may have to take all four in the morning, one at mid-day, and three at night. In many cases, the number of prescriptions exceeds ten, and patients or their caregivers may add non-prescription medications, such as aspirin and calcium. Often, different medications are taken at different intervals, such as once a day, three times a day, or four times a day.
Managing so many medications and administration times is often challenging, especially for impaired patients and overworked caregivers. The medications are typically supplied in multiple containers, each containing a single prescription medication, and the user must properly remove the medications from the containers, organize them into a dose grouping (dose), and administer them at the correct time. Errors are frequent, resulting in many health effects, and can result in re-hospitalization and death.
Various organization devices have been suggested to reduce errors, such as pill organization boxes, but these require the user to correctly load the box in order for them to be effective, a time consuming and inexact process. Thus, there is a need for a practical methods for pre-organizing medications to reduce labor and/or errors.